'Overthinking' can be a problem

August 21, 2013 - Burt Angeli

“Thinking too much at the wrong time can be a bad thing because your brain tries to take charge at the precise moment when your body doesn't need any help,” a Yahoo.com story reported. “Your muscles, for anything from shooting a basketball to simply breathing, have their own memories. You don't have to tell your heart when to beat. And if the "executive" part of your brain butts in, it's probably going to hurt, not help.

"We call it overthinking," neuroscientist Taraz Lee of the University of California-Santa Barbara said.

Lee, lead author of a study in the Journal of Neuroscience, said our bodies learn to do some things so well that if we think about what we are doing while under intense pressure it may actually hurt our chances of succeeding.